Director’s Loopy Pitch Video Is Too Insane for the Client, but You’ll Enjoy It

Tony Benna puts his friends through hell

Tony Benna, a director at Mekanism, had some interesting ideas for a recent pitch to a client—and roped in some Mekanism co-workers to be the actors in his pitch video.

He tells AdFreak:

"The idea behind this specific pitch was to play off the idea of the incredibly stupid stuff people do when they are bored. Anyone that has ever played with a clothespin or binder clip inevitably tries to put it on their nose, or lip, or ear or whatever … So the thought was to show a montage of people doing incredibly stupid things by themselves. We see each person in a slow-motion stupid thought with a simple object, and then cut back to them doing a completely unexpected stupid action.

"This is where it got interesting, I went in to shoot the video without any real ideas for these vignettes, so I improvised! The results were unfortunately WAY too far out there for the client, and pretty much everyone that saw it. So it got killed. A few weeks ago I had a good friend in town and he asked to see some of my recent work. I stumbled across the raw footage from that pitch video and we were literally crying laughing. Not so much at the ideas, but at the torture I put my friends through. That coupled with my unapologetic monotone direction coming from off screen made it hilarious! So I decided I should repurpose the footage, and show the true madness behind a Mekanism pitch video."